University of California student activists and union organizers won't remain silent

UC activists and student-worker union members call for an end to sexual violence and rape culture in organizing spaces: http://notremainsilent.wordpress.com/

"When groups shield those who are called out this sends a message to all people in the group that perpetrators of sexual violence will face no consequences and that they will be able to freely continue their lives without interruption. This message makes the group especially hostile to women, LGBT people, and survivors, who will likely be more afraid of coming forward with their own stories. When groups shield those called out it also signals to perpetrators of sexual violence that their actions are tacitly endorsed by the group, which normalizes and promotes further sexual violence. When groups protect those called out, they prioritize the comfort, freedom, and work of the perpetrator over all others’. In doing so, they act in contradiction with their stated commitment to justice and liberation. We do not see any possibility of building labor movements or movements for social emancipation with groups that refuse to fully address and respond to accusations of sexual violence; that do not actively oppose gender and sexual oppression; and that push to the margins women, LGBT people, and survivors of sexual violence. The stakes are too high; we will not remain silent."

Please sign using the above link if you agree.

UCLA Frat Boy Assaults and Attempts to Murder Woman (Just Another Friday)

Reposted from Radio Rahim

UCLA Sigma Chi Fraternity archive photo

This is an old photo from UCLA fraternity Sigma Chi, which is just up the street from where a UCLA fraternity member attempted to rape a woman at a party on Friday, March 9th (International Women’s Day, no less). Though the fraternities will insist that this as an unfortunate one-time occurrence, and the university will reiterate its principles of community and commitment to safety until it is blue and gold in the face, the reality is that the fraternity system is a factory of misogyny, which will continue to devalue and commit violence against women until it is made to stop. Of course, misogyny is not restricted to the fraternity system, but it must be pointed out that the ideas championed in this photo serve as the pretext for the violence that occurred Friday night.

UCLA student arrested on suspicion of assault with intent to commit rape at Theta Chi fraternity house

A UCLA student will face charges of assault with intent to commit rape and false imprisonment, after he allegedly tried to choke another student during a party at the Theta Chi fraternity house early Friday morning. He is being held at the Inmate Reception Center in downtown Los Angeles on $200,000 bail, according to university police.

Paul Meyer, a 20-year old student who lives in the Theta Chi fraternity house at 663 Gayley Ave., is scheduled to appear in court for a formal reading of his charges on Tuesday, according to Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department records. He can plead guilty, not guilty or no contest to the charges during the arraignment.

About 2:30 a.m. Friday, Meyer allegedly attempted to choke a female UCLA student who was also attending the party, said Nancy Greenstein, a UCPD spokeswoman. She added that alcohol was available at the party, but police are still investigating whether Meyer or the victim were drinking.

Meyer and the woman knew each other before the incident took place, Greenstein said.

The female student was taken to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and has since been released, Greenstein said.

Immediately following the incident, Meyer was arrested without a struggle at the house on suspicion of attempted murder, according to a UCLA statement. Meyer is being held on charges of assault with intent to commit rape and false imprisonment, which is unlawful violation of another person’s personal liberty.

Theta Chi officials declined to comment on Friday’s incident. The police investigation is still ongoing and no further details are available at this time, according to a UCLA statement.

http://dailybruin.com/2013/03/09/ucla-student-charged-with-felony-after-allegedly-attempting-to-assault-a-fellow-student/

Woman beheads rapist

On August 28, at least five months pregnant by a man who she said continued to rape her, Yildirim said she decided she had had enough. Gider was climbing up the back wall of her house. "I knew he was going to rape me again," she said at her preliminary hearing August 30.

She said she grabbed her father-in-law's rifle that was hanging on the wall and she shot him. He tried to draw his gun and she fired again.

"I chased him," she said. "He fell on the ground. He started cussing. I shot his sexual organ this time. He became quiet. I knew he was dead. I then cut his head off."

Witnesses described Yildirim walking into the village square, carrying the man's head by his hair, blood dripping on the ground.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/world/europe/turkey-rape-beheading

If You Can't Beat 'Em

An excerpt from "Betrayal: A critical analysis of rape culture in anarchist subcircles"

As alluded to earlier, these repressive measures can actually split the ranks of the more moderate rape apologists, undermining the common front against the survivor. At the same time, repressive measures are deemed necessary at the very least when the usual process of normalization is broken. This points to one of the biggest contradictions within Rape Culture: that the very violence it relies on to reproduce itself also reveals its true nature for all to see. This contradiction is resolved by recuperative  forces within radical communities which seek to co-opt support for survivors and redirect it against them. Many will claim to support a survivor while actually undermining their autonomy. This is usually done by limiting the possible scope of a survivor’s response to exclude anything that might further upset the social peace. These false supporters work to uphold the image of a supportive community, and in the process prevent any truly critical engagement with community. Their tools are the language and organizing frameworks which were forged by survivors and their  supporters, appropriated for the purpose of disempowerment and twisted to usurp the survivors’ struggle.

Initially, the creation of words and new frameworks to use them was necessary, as the language for survivors to even talk about their experiences did not exist. Unfortunately, words are easily recuperated, and we can now see the inevitable limitations of relying on them so heavily. Once upon a time, radicals championed the use of the word “perpetrator” as an attempt to sidestep the stigma of harsher words. The once prevalent framework of Restorative Justice emphasised a person‘s ability to change.  “Rapist” or “abuser” hardly underlined these values, and many felt it kept the rapists and abusers locked in those roles, just as referring to survivors as “victims” potentially kept them locked in a moment of subjugation rather than underlying their strength and perseverance. Of course now we are faced with a new wave of anti-violence activists, who lament the stigmatized nature of the word perpetrator, and now advocate the even more watered down term “person who causes harm”. Perhaps it’s time to realize that if a perpetrators capacity to change is not broadly recognized, that is a result of their own actions more so than the words we use to describe them. This is not to say that we should not choose our words strategically, or that we should not use them with strong intention, but only that our apparent obsession with language has serious drawbacks. At best, it leaves us caught in a never ending loop to find the right words rather than addressing our more meaningful shortcomings. At worst, it preserves the power dynamics of Rape Culture by attributing fault to survivors and their supporters rather than perpetrators and their apologists.

This bizarre reversal, where a perpetrators refusal of  accountability is viewed at least partially as a result of flaws in a survivor’s response, is a common pattern seized upon by the recuperative forces of Rape Culture.  Zines and pamphlets list strategies towards accountability which seek to avoid making a perpetrator defensive, which are perhaps better understood as strategies towards accountability which seek to accommodate a perpetrators defensiveness. The only thing such an approach avoids is a
recognition that being defensive is not something forced on a person by others, but a reactionary response which must be realized and worked through for any genuine accountability to be possible. Many will use the term defensive without ever asking, “in defence of what?”

Of course many survivors who anticipate defensiveness and the repressive apparatus activated by it have made good use of such strategies in the short term to initiate dialogue, or else to make demands concerning immediate safety without the goal of transforming a perpetrator. We have no interest in questioning the choices survivors make or discouraging the dissemination of potentially useful strategies (because, of course, how useful any given approach might be can only be decided by survivors themselves). Our concern is when the accommodation of defensiveness or the strategies implied by it become a tool of false supporters to limit the possible choices available to survivors, or to criticize those choices they disapprove of after a survivor has made them. Discussions of how to call out a perpetrator rarely centre on the survivor’s needs. “Avoiding defensiveness” provides the pretense to shift the discussion back to the needs of the perpetrator. Once a perpetrator has been called out, a similar framework is used to undermine support for a survivor. The false supporters endlessly reassure us that they are not angry that a perpetrator was called out, it’s only the way they were called out. The fact that a survivor would speak openly about their experiences is seemingly taken as more violent and controversial than the violence of those experiences themselves, which warrant very little discussion by comparison. How a survivor’s public response might reflect their needs does not seem to occur to the false supporters as they are so preoccupied with their need to preserve an artificial social peace. Again we see liberal tendencies rearing their head, as the false supporters’ insistence on denouncing the resistance of survivors, on claiming to also despise the Culture of Rape while simultaneously diminishing any fight against it, is reminiscent of liberals who claim to agree with the grievances of protesters and yet condemn any actions they might take to address them. The liberal complains that intensity and ferocity sabotages the struggle, but of course the anarchist knows the real problem is that we haven’t gone far enough.


As mentioned earlier, this is all part of a larger pattern to maintain the power dynamics that Rape Culture relies upon. There are countless other examples. The accountability process itself can be a double edged sword. Radical communities often divorce the accountability process from its place within the broader Restorative Justice framework, offering it as the sole response to intimate violence while simultaneously avoiding any further attempts at pre-empting violence before it happens. This false support places the needs of the survivor secondary to the question of how to deal  with a perpetrator, once again prioritizing the needs of the perpetrator and maintaining the pattern of domination. What little support is offered survivors often replicates this same dynamic. One of the most common models of support used, that of making demands of the perpetrator, once again leaves all agency in the perpetrator’s hands, especially when there is no contingency plan if the perpetrator should refuse. Survivors who become emotionally invested in such models as a path for healing are often  devastated when the demands yield nothing, or worse, when they incite a new barrage from the perpetrator and the repressive forces. In the anarchist milieu, where it is widely recognized that demands are mostly useless when not accompanied with the threat of force, it is quite revealing that such models prevail.

UAW Local 2865 "Academic Workers for a Democratic Union" caucus statement on PLP's support of rape

Academic Workers for a Democratic Union, a reform caucus in UAW Local 2865, stands in solidarity with our fellow union and caucus member who was raped by Seth Miller, a member of the Progressive Labor Party. In response, the Progressive Labor party sought to undermine the account of the survivor, attacking her and her allies, offering only a privately circulated self- evaluation and a slap on the wrist to her assailant as their pretense of accountability.

In their official response to the demand for accountability, the organization claims to fight “sexism, patriarchy, and misogyny in every aspect”, while virtually in the same breath slandering the survivor and her allies as “informant-provocateurs” acting in collusion with the fascist police state. The PLP has made clear that the oppression of women means nothing to them when it challenges the practices and the structure of their organization. They have gone to considerable lengths to make this go away, including slandering the survivor, rather than addressing the problem that they have a member who has committed sexual assault. The organization, in very practical terms, has made a decision here. The Progressive Labor Party are apologists for a rapist, and therefore have placed their commitment to male supremacy – and silencing anything that would get in the way of that – above other concerns. They could have lived up to their own rhetoric regarding opposition to all forms of sexism, patriarchy, and misogyny, or they could continue to privilege their cadre over the project of social justice. By continuing to take the latter course, the Progressive Labor Party has indicated that it is an impediment to the goal of the radical transformation of society.

With this statement of solidarity, we call out Seth Miller as a rapist and PLP as an organization that harbors rapists and perpetuates rape culture. The PLP is no longer welcome in any organizing spaces we are a part of. We will not contribute to a political project that boils down to rape apologism and victim-blaming. We will work to stand in solidarity with all those who experience gender-based discrimination, assaults, and other forms of violence both in the various activist circles that we are a part of and in the broader society. Our stance is that the work of class struggle must be combined with struggles against all forms of oppression without the attempt to reduce or simplify them into a hierarchy. We pledge to redouble our efforts of addressing patriarchal behavior throughout our union and all of our other communities. We will also continue to create structures to challenge patriarchal practices in our organization, in our local, and in our international, directly addressing the way that our dynamics contribute to the oppression of our comrades and to women everywhere.

How Can Your IWW Branch Support Women And Fight Patriarchy?

To appear in the March 2013 issue of the Industrial Worker

Gruesome examples of women’s oppression like the Delhi gang rape or the Steubenville football team get lots of headlines and head-shaking. Far more common are sexual assaults of women by men close to the victim. The culture that enables this violence is built on the everyday slights, power plays, and insults that women experience constantly. Activist circles are not immune, and activist groups often promote patriarchal structures, rape culture, and the silencing of victims. What can your branch do to promote a healthier culture, discourage patriarchal behavior, hold perpetrators accountable, and support our fellow workers? Here are a few approaches your branch can take:

1. The small stuff matters. Find ways to disrupt implicit social power structures. Practice active facilitation: encourage all to speak and participate, not just those who volunteer. Engage in skill sharing with new people. Be aware and skeptical of experienced men isolating and taking individual new women “under their wing.” Step back from leadership and let new people step up and make mistakes. Be organized—disorganization and informality allow informal power structures and privilege to take over. Reverse gender roles. Be productive in meetings. Value and recognize non-public, non-heroic work. Value and recognize facilitative, bureaucratic and emotional work. Encourage a culture of honest, caring criticism: give it and receive it well.

2. Fighting patriarchy is not women’s work. Everyone must take on the labor, social risk, and emotional burden of confronting patriarchal behavior, from dominating meetings to divisions of labor to sexual assault. Take the lead from the most oppressed people in the group, but take your own initiative. Don’t take someone else’s lack of action as an excuse to do nothing. There is nothing “more important” to do first. Even if you weren’t the target, patriarchal oppression in your community is your business. Often targets of patriarchy don’t want to be a victim twice; once from the original incident and again for having friends betray them by not listening, not taking them seriously, and not acting.

3. Take complaints of patriarchal oppression seriously, from small things like condescension in meetings to sexual harassment and assault. Don’t argue with someone else’s experiences. Activists do not have a “right” to participate in organizing spaces, and everyone has the right to feel safe. Immediately suspend those accused of serious offenses pending investigation. Temporary suspension is not a punishment, but it protects community safety and is a first step in taking the matter seriously. Ensure survivor safety. Promote survivors’ rights over perpetrators rights’.

Finally, patriarchy and sexual violence are not always perpetrated by men against women. Framing patriarchy and sexual violence as solely an act committed by men against women glosses over the amplified oppression of women of color, new activists, queer folk, trans folk, non-English speakers, etc. Patriarchy intersects with racism, ableism, ageism, homophobia, classism, and many other forms of oppression, and special attention needs to be paid to fight these power structures simultaneously.

On Solidarity and Sexual Violence: An open letter to the Palestine Solidarity Movement

The explosion of media coverage of sexual assault and community response to gender violence, following the gang-rape and murder of a Delhi medical student, has sparked a lot of important discussion around the world. What is often missed in this discourse is the fact that the issue of sexual violence extends far beyond India and into our own communities, and that most people who experience it are assaulted by someone they know, and often trust. In activist spaces we tend to assume that we are safe, surrounded by like-minded people, however reports of harassment and sexual assault within hacker, Occupy, and other communities have proven that this is not always the case. Historically sexual violence has been tragically prevalent in revolutionary movements. There is a long and troubling history of survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault being forced out of their organizations for reporting their attackers, or staying silent for the “sake of the movement”. At times leaders in various activist spaces have made this even worse by openly reinforcing patriarchy. Stokely Carmichael, storied leader of the Black Panthers and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), once infamously commented “The only position for women in SNCC is prone”. The hard work of women’s and LGBTQ rights activists may have improved the situation since then (not that those spaces are immune to sexual violence), but even in today’s social justice movements sexual assault is often closer than many would like to think. I hope that sharing my own story can help spark some discussion about how we want to deal with this issue, in both the wider Palestine solidarity movement, and in our local organizing spaces.


While living in Palestine several years ago I was sexually assaulted by a fellow activist. It happened after what seemed like a pretty normal night of blowing off steam with friends. Earlier that day I met a guy I’ll call “M” through some organizers who were hosting me. We knew a lot of the same people and he worked with a group I have a huge amount of respect for. After hanging out in the evening M and I hit it off and he kissed me, asking me to join him outside. Once we were alone he became very sexually forward, but when I made it clear I wasn’t interested in going further we went inside, and I thought that was the end of it.

Hours later, after I’d gone to sleep, I woke up abruptly to find M standing over me. I was so startled that I gasped, and he told me to be quiet so as not to wake up our friends sleeping in the same room. He got into my bed, and started trying to kiss and grope me against my will. When I told him that I did not want this kind of contact, he ignored me. He became more aggressive when I physically resisted, only backing off after remembering that there were others in the room. When he finally got frustrated and left, I locked myself in the bathroom for a long time before returning to the bedroom and bolting the door.

The next morning I tried to tell a friend what had happened, but was too ashamed to say anything other than “M came in here last night...” I felt like it was somehow my fault for kissing him back earlier that night, and worried that my friends would not believe me, or would take his “side”. For a long time I refused to speak to anyone about what had happened, barely even admitting to myself that I had experienced a sexual assault.

In my head there were a lot of reasons to stay silent. Would people believe my story or think I was a traitor for accusing a popular fellow activist? I didn’t scream or alert others in the room, so did it really even “count” as a sexual assault? I also worried about how my identity would affect the situation if the authorities got involved. M is Palestinian and I’m an American with a huge amount of privilege in Israel and abroad. I doubted the Palestinian police would do much about it, but thought if Israeli authorities found out, my assault could be politicized in ways that I was not comfortable with. I also did not want to endanger the already imperiled institutions we were both associated with. After leaving Palestine and holding all of this in for nearly a year, I finally opened up to a close friend back home, who is also a solidarity activist. Talking with her helped me see my experience in a different light and come to terms with the fact that the assault was the fault of my attacker, and not my own.


I want to be clear; I do not think sexual violence is uniquely prevalent in the Palestine solidarity movement, or even in Palestine itself. I’ve heard too many accounts from too many friends about similar experiences at bars, on college campuses, at parties, and even in their own homes. I’m telling my story now because I consider this movement to be like my family, and unfortunately sexual assault can and does happen anywhere and everywhere, including our “safest” spaces. It is up to us to decide how we deal with it in our communities but I think the best way is to be proactive.

Many Palestine solidarity groups have gotten off to a good start with statements denouncing sexism along with other forms of prejudice, but we can and should do more. Promoting more discussion about how patriarchy and gender violence impact the occupation, our organizing, and our relationships with our fellow activists is a good starting point. How this dialogue is constructed will very from space to space, but some things should remain constant:

1) The onus should always remain on perpetrators not to commit assault, rather than on victims to prevent it from happening. Establishing clear and consistent guidelines about responding to incidents of sexual violence in our organizations, and identifying how best to support those who experience them, is key.

2) We must acknowledge sexual violence as a social problem. While addressing rape culture in our spaces is important, so is replacing it with something positive that affirms the value of all our fellow activists and allies. Addressing dynamics within our groups is a crucial part of this; the idea that some individuals are perceived as being more popular and thus more “valuable” than others can contribute to predatory behavior and the silencing of victims.

3) While it goes without saying that this is a sensitive topic and should be treated as such, we should always conduct these conversations with the knowledge that this issue may already be affecting people in our communities in ways that are not readily visible. It will not always be easy for everyone to hear or talk about. The way we initiate and sustain our conversations on sexual violence must be sensitive to this.

4) Finally, we should not limit our discussion to violence within our own circles, there is also a deafening silence about the sexual harassment and assault associated with military occupation and ethnic cleansing, which is enabled in part by the difficult and often taboo nature of the subject. Addressing this in our organizing will not only strengthen our solidarity with Palestinians, but also can create space for new and creative coalition building.

These are not easy discussions, but I believe they are necessary for creating a truly just and equitable movement. Those among us who experience sexual violence should not feel that we have to remain silent for the sake of solidarity, and should be able to know that we will find it if we choose to confide in our follow activists. The Palestine solidarity movement is not going to single-handedly solve the issue of sexual assault, but we can take action against it and refuse to be complicit in covering it up.

Don't call yourself a revolutionary...

An excerpt from: Don't call yourself a revolutionary - A dispatch from Seattle

From Shades of Silence , by Infinite Venom

Don’t call yourself a revolutionary if doing the work around confronting sexual assault and patriarchy is not considered worthy of time and effort, yet you can put massive numbers of hours into planning other campaigns that keep you inside of your comfort zone and give you the illusion that you are “productive”. No, you are not being productive if you think winning small victories and keeping yourself seen and heard matters more than tearing down the oppressions that lead to the necessity for doing the campaigns in the first place. No, it is not a matter of capacity or time management. I see what you are doing. You are counter-revolutionary.

Rape and death

Excerpted from Undoing Sex: Against Sexual Optimism by C.E. in Lies: A Journal of Material Feminism Vol. 1.


VI – RAPE AND DEATH
There is then some truth in the phrase, misattributed to Andrea Dworkin, that “all sex is rape.” Rape and sex are far from foreign to each other, but rather are mutually constitutive elements of a broader structure of exploitation. Rape’s violence and transgression is not aberrant but rather a defining aspect of sexuality. It is the original appropriation driving all subsequent consumption or self ownership, a threat or reality that renders sexuality meaningful. Defining the qualities that make sex an event unlike rape becomes difficult; there is no true absence of force, nothing to “consent” to that isn’t on the terms of male power.

The by now traditional feminist approach to ending rape — recognizing rape as a moral outrage, attempting to isolate its unacceptable features, and remove its cancer from the otherwise healthy body of sexuality — fails from its outset to address this reality. In practice, this often adheres to a colonialist pattern, civil society offering its hand in saving or correcting an aberration. Rape, we are told, is violence, not sex. The rapist is an almost metaphysically different creature than the normal man, either a monster or, for liberals, simply very sick. It’s something Other, a quality of the fallen. Yet the concrete realities of rape flagrantly contradict this. The oft-cited statistic that we are much more likely to be raped by someone we know, rather than some stranger lurking in an alley, confirms the suspicion one gains by painful experience. Rape amounts to a horribly normal exercise of power — men over women, white over brown, straight over gay, jailer over prisoner, and so on. “A rape is not an isolated event or moral transgression or individual interchange gone wrong but an act of terrorism and torture within a systemic context of group subjection, like lynching.”

Throughout the whole of sexuality we can find many of the qualities attributed specifically to rape. It’s not a stretch to say that the affective labor of sexuality, the emotional work of another’s subjectification, is exploitative. Likewise the structural constraints on consent, the subtle and not-so-subtle violence that make “no” unheard or unspeakable, can be experienced as coercion, and the abdication of self-definition and submission to another’s will often required to enter into sex can be felt as violation. It is in such experience that the presence of rape, its inextricability from sex becomes clear, yet to flatly characterize all experience of sexuality as rape would be a denial of difference. Sex and rape are not two points on a spectrum of gendered violence and exploitation, one being simply more painful, but rather rape is distinct aspect of patriarchy and sexuality coexisting with and mutually definitive of “normal” sex, which lives a different life socially. Designations of whose rape is tolerable or encouraged and whose is a moral outrage are themselves a concrete  relation. As much as rape may give sexuality its (gendered) meaning, it is not meted out equally, and weaponized beyond a narrow, binary scope of gender.

Put bluntly: rape is a function of social death. To be raped is not unlike torture in that the raped is placed beyond the bounds of law, norm, or simple caring. To be raped is to be at a point of absolute objectification, boundaries not just violated but uprooted entirely, made meaningless. No help arrives, no language exists to communicate or reconcile one’s pain because one is at the point where normalcy produces, contains, and makes operative excess, silence, and the incommunicable. Yet this is not the constant experience of a monolithic class of “woman”; for many it is possible to be seen as defileable, to have a purity deemed worth protecting from transgression, and so such excess is meted out sparingly and discreetly. It is only sometimes that one’s rape even bears the name or meaning of rape, and where it is nameless it is institutionalized — as in prisons where it is made into a joke, or in the many private hells where one is always “asking for it”. Over and over in historical moments of genocide and  colonization mass rape emerges as an institutional principle, and in a similar though not coterminous movement rape is prescribed in nearly all modern societies as a means of normalizing deviant bodies.  This death haunts the sexuality of civil society. It is the difference that establishes the not-me, not-male, not-subject, not-woman patriarchal desire needs so that it has an object to act upon. Likewise gendered labor and gendered self exist only in relation to this notness, to some degree fragilely living with it, in partial and productive silence, and to some degree shifting such violence elsewhere.

Modifying our first statement — rape is implicated in all forms of  sex, and to perceive rape rightly as a scandal calls into question the foundation of every form of sexuality. Normative, civil sex is only one part of a system that has rape as its basis, as a central operating principle. The imagined integrity of the perfectly consenting subject amounts to little more than a regulatory principle of rape, a purity to be defended against a threatening Other. Which is not to say that assertion of dignity, of the right to not be raped, by those denied it is not a frequently necessary, worthwhile move. Rather, feminism needs to be wary of falling into a cultural conservatism that identifies rape as exogenous to sex and the social, as a disease to be cut away. To challenge rape is to challenge all conceptions of sex and bodies available to us; to undo it would be to uproot thousands of years of society, from what may well be civilization’s beginning.

PLP is threatening activists with state repression

PLP party leader in Los Angeles Hugo Sarmiento is threatening activists with libel suits for exposing his role in leading the cover up and defense of admitted rapist and PLP member Seth Miller.

This is in direct contradiction with their own letter claiming they "...would never expose other activists to fascist State violence to settle our political disagreements."

For a more detailed analysis of PL's hypocritical, dishonest letter, please read an earlier post, "How PLP Unwittingly Confesses to Misogyny and What We Can Do About It".

IWW branches' statements of solidarity

The San Diego and Boston IWW General Membership Branches have endorsed separate statements of solidarity with survivors of gender-based violence and against PLP's defense of rape.

Statement of Solidarity with Survivors of Gender-based Violence and Condemnation of the PLP’s Defense of Rape and Class Reductionism

IWW Boston GMB - 1/20/2013

http://iwwboston.org/2013/01/21/statement-of-solidarity-with-survivors-of-gender-based-violence-and-condemnation-of-the-plps-defense-of-rape-and-class-reductionism/

Preamble

A few years ago, a Fellow Worker was raped by Seth Miller, a member of PLP in Los Angeles. He and the Fellow Worker had been friends and had done organizing together prior to this attack. Last year, the survivor decided to go public with what had happened and approached PLP hoping that they would help her hold the perpetrator accountable. The response of the PLP has been appalling: obstructing the survivor’s desired accountability process, and requiring only a self-evaluation and a drinking partner for the perpetrator. Worse still, they have started an insidious misinformation campaign intended to undermine the credibility of the survivor, her account, and her allies. In their official response they claim to fight “sexism, patriarchy, and misogyny in every aspect”, and then promptly continue with slandering the survivor and her allies as “informant-provocateurs” acting in collusion with the “fascist police state.”

In our analysis, what leads groups to engage in this kind of rape apologism and victim blaming is the ideology of class reductionism. Stated simply by the folks at the riseup.net, class reductionism is "The idea that class oppression supersedes race or gender oppression." Consequently, all forms of oppression -racism, sexism, ageism etc. - are merely reflections or flavors of class oppression. According to this line of thinking, anything that interferes with a class reductionist organization's program to overthrow capitalism and abolish class oppression can rationally (and conveniently) be suppressed by any means necessary. We seek to distinguish this from an approach to anti-capitalist organizing that sees intersectionality rather than a hierarchy of oppression.

The response of PLP is class reductionism at its worst. It is being deployed here to protect the privileges of men and clad rape apologism and victim blaming in the false armor of bogus class struggle heroics. It is our duty to recognize and take action when those that call themselves revolutionaries perpetuate the forms of oppression that keep the working class divided. There is nothing more damaging to class struggle than denying the interrelatedness of all forms of oppression or subsuming the real, lived experiences of comrades into a self-serving ideological framework: one that does not face the reality of oppression but instead prevents the underlying social relations which prop up privilege and maintain oppression from ever being analyzed properly, much less dismantled.

Resolution

Whereas the Boston Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World is determined to fight rape culture and patriarchy in our union and in society at large, and


Whereas we reject class reductionism (the belief that class oppression supersedes race or gender oppression), and,

Whereas our approach to the class struggle recognizes the intersectionality of all forms of oppression without the attempt to simplify or reduce them into a hierarchy, and

Whereas a Fellow Worker was raped by Seth Miller, a member of the Progressive Labor Party, as described at http://necessarymeansfight.blogspot.com/2012/12/progressive-labor-party-defends-rapists.html, and

Whereas the response of the Progressive Labor Party to the survivor’s efforts to have them hold Seth Miller accountable has been abhorrent, and


Whereas the Progressive Labor Party has sought to undermine the credibility of the survivor and has sought to protect the rapist, and


Whereas the survivor, a Fellow Worker, has asked that we a) exclude PLP from our organizing campaigns and spaces, b) warn our allies, c) examine and address patriarchal behavior in our organizing communities, d) actively support and defend survivors of sexual violence, and


Noting the formation of an anti-patriarchy committee at the Boston General Membership Branch Meeting on January 13th, 2013 to address the problem of patriarchy within our branch and in our organizing, including the implementation of this resolution, therefore be it


Resolved, 
That the Boston General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, in solidarity with the survivor and in support of her wishes, will no longer collaborate in organizing campaigns or share organizing spaces with the Progressive Labor Party, or any other organizations which protect rapists and promote rape culture through their words or actions. This proposal and accompanying documentation will be made available to groups that we organize with, and to the stakeholders of venues where we meet regularly. We pledge to stand in solidarity with all victims and survivors of gender-based discrimination, assaults, and other forms of violence, both in the “revolutionary left” and in the broader society. We recognize that the only way to do that is to listen to survivors and to honor their wishes.

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San Diego IWW's Statement of Solidarity with Survivors of Gender-based Violence and Condemnation of the PLP’s Defense of Rape and Class Reductionism

The San Diego Committee of the Industrial Workers of the World stands in full solidarity with a Fellow Worker who was raped by a prominent organizer in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). The response of the PLP has been abhorrent, combining a meaningless self-evaluation and a slap on the wrist with insidious undermining of the survivor, her account, and her allies.

In their official response, they claim to fight “sexism, patriarchy, and misogyny in every aspect”, while in the same breath slander the survivor and her allies as “informant-provocateurs” acting in collusion with the fascist police state. The PLP has made clear that the oppression of women, even in its most horrific and violent manifestation, means nothing when it interferes with their prescription for revolution. They will do anything to make this go away. PLP would rather slander the survivor than take necessary action to address the problem that one of their members has committed sexual assault. Their response is class reductionism at its worst. It is being deployed here to protect the privileges of men and cloak rape apologism and victim blaming in the false armor of bogus class struggle heroics. It is our duty to recognize and take action when those that call themselves revolutionaries perpetuate the forms of oppression that keep the working class divided. There is nothing more damaging to class struggle than denying the separate existence of other forms of oppression.

We will work to stand in solidarity with all those who experience gender-based discrimination, assaults, and other forms of victimization-- both within the “revolutionary left” and in broader society. Our stance is that the work of class struggle must be combined with struggles against all forms of oppression, without the attempt to reduce or simplify them into a hierarchy. Members of the San Diego IWW pledge to redouble our efforts of addressing patriarchal behavior throughout our union and within the broader community.  We will take action to create a working sub-committee to confront patriarchy in our union, and directly address the way that our dynamics contribute to the oppression of our comrades and women everywhere.    

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Statement of Solidarity with Survivors of Gender-based Violence and Condemnation of the PLP’s Defense of Rape

The Los Angeles/Ricardo Flores Magón General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, January 27, 2013 

In Solidarity with the Fellow Workers of the Boston General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, The Los Angeles / Ricardo Flores Magón General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World support the following Statement of Solidarity. The Los Angeles GMB of the IWW supports the Boston GMB’s positions of solidarity with the Fellow Worker who was raped by Seth Miller, member of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), and will integrate region-specific methods of solidarity with our Fellow Worker. Furthermore, the LA GMB will assess and deconstruct patriarchal elements from within our branch’s functions and promote outreach to survivors of gender-based violence.

Background Information:
A few years ago, a Fellow Worker was raped by Seth Miller, a member of PLP in Los Angeles. He and the Fellow Worker had been friends and had done organizing together prior to this attack. Last year, the survivor decided to go public with what had happened and approached PLP hoping that they would help her hold the perpetrator accountable. The response of the PLP has been appalling: obstructing the survivor’s desired accountability process, and requiring only a self-evaluation and a drinking partner for the perpetrator. Worse still, they have started an insidious misinformation campaign intended to undermine the credibility of the survivor, her account, and her allies. In their official response they claim to fight “sexism, patriarchy, and misogyny in every aspect”, and then promptly continue with slandering the survivor and her allies as “informant-provocateurs” acting in collusion with the “fascist police state.”

We at the Los Angeles/Ricardo Flores Magón General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World condemn the Progressive Labor Party’s response to the Fellow Worker’s demands for justice against their rapist. It is our duty to recognize and take action when those that call themselves revolutionaries perpetuate gender violence by protecting rapists, ignore the survivor’s demands, and attack the survivor for demanding justice.

Resolution
Whereas the Los Angeles / Ricardo Flores Magón General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World is determined to fight rape culture and patriarchy in our union and in
society at large, and

Whereas a Fellow Worker was raped by Seth Miller, a member of the Progressive Labor Party, as described at: http://necessarymeansfight.blogspot.com/2012/12/progressive-labor-party-defends-rapists.html, and

Whereas the response of the Progressive Labor Party to the survivor’s efforts to have them hold Seth Miller accountable has been abhorrent, and
Whereas the Progressive Labor Party has sought to undermine the credibility of the survivor and has sought to protect the rapist, and

Whereas the survivor, a Fellow Worker, has asked that we a) exclude PLP from our organizing campaigns and spaces, b) warn our allies, c) examine and address patriarchal behavior in our organizing communities, d) actively support and defend survivors of sexual violence, and

Therefore, be it resolved that the Los Angeles / Ricardo Flores Magón General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, in solidarity with the survivor and in support of her wishes, will no longer collaborate in organizing campaigns or share organizing spaces with the Progressive Labor Party, or any other organizations which protect rapists and promote rape culture through their words or actions. This proposal and accompanying documentation will be made available to groups that we organize with, and to the stakeholders of venues where we meet regularly. We pledge to stand in solidarity with all victims and survivors of gender-based discrimination, assaults, and other forms of violence, both in the “revolutionary left” and in the broader society. We recognize that the only way to do that is to listen to survivors and to honor their wishes.

- The Los Angeles/Ricardo Flores Magón General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, January 27, 2013 

Woman Dies as a Result of Reporting Rape by Notre Dame Football Players

A woman was raped by famous and popular football players. She reported it. They bullied her to attempt to silence her and eventually drove her to suicide. The football players have suffered no consequences.

Why I won’t be cheering for old Notre Dame  

“She said she’d been raped by a member of the football team at a party off campus,” the R.A. told me. I also spoke to the R.A.’s parents, who met the young woman that same night, when their daughter brought her to their home after leaving the hospital. They said they saw — and reported to athletic officials — a hailstorm of texts from other players, warning the young woman not to report what had happened: “They were trying to silence this girl,” the R.A.’s father told me. And did; no criminal complaint was ever filed.

This violence and deliberate tragedy is massively overshadowed by Notre Dame football player Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend story.

Patriarchy of Structurelessness - Rape Culture in Anarchist Practice

There have been multiple excellent critiques on how Progressive Labor Party and the UK’s Socialist Worker’s Party have grotesquely mishandled the situations of rapists within their leadership. Anarchist groups are neither immune to sexual violence, nor to protecting rapists at the expense of survivors. As anarchists, we are foolish, irrelevant, and hypocritical if we do not examine the structure of anarchist organizing and how it enables perpetrators of sexual violence.

Let’s compare the structures of PL vs. the common structures of anarchist organizing spaces that enable patriarchal violence:

	PLP	Anarchists
Bro code	Male-dominated groups fear confronting their own patriarchy; machismo is valued	Male-dominated groups fear confronting their own patriarchy; machismo is valued
Unity above accountability	Party unity is primary	Group cohesion is primary
Political priorities	Class struggle is primary, feminism is anti-working-class	Attacking the state or capitalism is primary over attacking internal oppression
Structure	Rigid structures prioritize party leadership, party cohesion	Hidden structures based on social capital and friendships prioritize “cred” and charismatic white men
Accountability processes	Pointless “self-criticisms” with no change in individuals, structures, or politics	Prioritizing rehabilitating and healing perpetrators of violence over protecting survivors’ safety
Social relationships	Prioritizing party members as more important people than non-members	Unwillingness to disrupt social relationships with harmful people
Individual value	A rapist is more important to the party than their victims	A rapist does more or better work than their victims

Anarchists must stand for something
Every anarchist group already agrees to basic principles of anti-oppression, whether it be from the state, economic relationships, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, etc. These principles must be put in practice to our best ability in our everyday work, or our political projects are meaningless lies we tell ourselves.

Too often organizing spaces for specific projects become support groups for shitty people at the expense of organizing. Not only to these people blow apart projects everywhere they are involved, but they continue to operate freely, moving from project to project and network to network. At the same time, targets of their behavior (usually women and people of color) join, quickly burn out, and are never seen again. If your group has ever noticed, “Why are there so many men here?” or “How can we get more people of color to join?” or “How do we get women to speak up?”, it’s your fault. The culture within your group is oppressive to these people, and they are sick of explaining to you for the thousandth time to shut up in meetings when others are talking, or prioritize their suggestions, or not to be condescending and patronizing, or to stop hitting on them after meetings, or to do some fucking work outside of meetings instead of just showing up to meetings and blabbering about your awesome ideas and cred.

Our capacity is limited
We do not have the expertise, numbers, or structures to be mental health counselors, rehabilitation coordinators, and justice systems within our organizing groups. Building these structures could be useful projects, but we cannot divert our energy from our other important goals to “rehabilitate” rapists or racists or jerks or let projects fall apart because someone is harming the group and the group is too cowardly to confront them. It’s also important to realize that many worthwhile modes of restorative justice are considered the role of the state, and the state will come after you if you step on their turf.

We must acknowledge that everyone is imperfect and support each other in our personal growth. We also must expel clearly harmful people from organizing spaces. We must not take energy from other important projects to fix harmful people. We need to support survivors of violence and oppression at the expense of including violent or oppressive people. That this is not part of our culture is shameful and shows the deep hypocrisy of our movement. If we allow oppressors to operate within our groups, our organizing is nothing but masturbatory, self-congratulatory, hypocritical bullshit that perpetuates everything we tell ourselves we’re against.

References
Tyranny of Structurelessness, J. Freeman
What does SWP’s way of dealing with sexual assault allegations tell us about the left?, L. Penny
The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities; C. Chen, J. Dulani, L. Piepzna-Samarasinha
Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements, C. Morris
Misogynists and the Left, M. McAlpine

From Delhi to Los Angeles to Steubenville…Smash Rape Culture Everywhere!

The case about the young woman who was brutally gang-raped in Delhi and died from the injuries has made international news. The broadcasted images of mass protests are quite inspiring because it appears that a new generation of youth are radicalizing and confronting patriarchal culture across South Asia. In early December—in the so-called feminist paradise of Sweden—teenage girls rioted in Gothenburg after being called sluts on Instagram. How about in the “land of the free”? Where are our riots against patriarchal culture? Because the truth is—we have lots to riot about.

In the U.S., like most patriarchal societies, people are taught to be concerned about protecting the life of the perpetrator and oppressor, rather that the life of the person that has been forever traumatized. U.S. society is also taught to rely on a racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic judicial and prison system to solve systemic problems. For those individuals who are interested in pre-figurative politics and transformative justice—how we confront oppression also reflects that type of society we want to create. But the struggle to confront patriarchy and rape culture will not be transformed through
meaningful conversation, because it is a war. The battles we wage each day to create cultures of consent and empowerment are part of a wider struggle for total liberation. The more that we discuss patriarchy and call people out for sexist, homophobic, and transphobic statements or “jokes,” the more likely it is that we can make our social and activist spaces safer. Such safe spaces and support networks allow us to do more than just confront personal situations, but to create societal changes. While the personal is political, we need a collective of folks for emotional and political support to confront oppressive bullshit. The physical and mental safety of our comrades is of paramount
importance.

This blog seeks to force the rapist Seth Miller and his party, the PLP, to be accountable. However, rape and the socialization of rape culture is not an anomaly, but the specter of it is always present. Just this week protests mounted in Steubenville, Ohio after Anonymous helped publicize a case in which a teenager was gang-raped by football players. In another case a few months ago, a teenager in Kentucky made her sexual assault case public after a gag order was placed on her to not discuss her case and protect her violators. The teenage victim told the Louisville Courier-Journal: “For months, I cried myself to sleep. I couldn’t go out in public places. You just sit there and wonder,
who saw (the pictures), who knows?” Just as this case proves, the courts and those who support patriarchal culture are deeply concerned with protecting sexual assaulters and rapists who are given a slap on the hand and license to do it again. An individual’s trauma or the possibility of future victims is rarely put into account. As Silvia Federici argues in her book Caliban and the Witch, rape culture is deeply embedded in our societies after centuries of oppression and trauma. Since it was internalized through socially accepted violence, it will be not be defeated without public discussions and direct action. We must confront impunity, rape culture, and dynamics of patriarchal domination, which feeds the oppression of our bodies and the exclusion of our self-empowerment.

One of the Steubenville Rapists

What will you do about people like this? 

They usually win.

http://www.yourdailymedia.com/post/steubenville-covers-for-its-high-school-football-stars-rapists/

http://planetransgender.blogspot.com/2012/12/anonymous-to-release-all-steubenville.html